Thank you, Chair.
With apologies to the interpreter, I realized this morning my notes are too long by half, so I'm going to speed through some of the initial remarks I was going to make.
Today, I'd like to review some of legal and economic drivers behind the dramatic increase in container losses in recent years and touch on some of the risks these have posed for B.C. waters that we find unacceptable and controllable, and finally propose some solutions for the committee's consideration.
Very briefly, the international regime governing container ship traffic is outdated. It was created in 1924 and has not been upgraded to reflect modern concepts of liability, of consequences for negligence, or the risks posed by the type of cargo that's now being carried to the ocean. Canada has been a bit of a laggard in this respect in that there have been several attempts to improve and update the rules. We are not a signatory to those.
Between the existing legal regime that minimizes liability for the ship's carrier and the economic pressures to deliver more goods faster, we can expect that without any intervention the number of container spills is only going to increase. This poses risks for the ocean, its inhabitants and coastal communities. They're bearing risks that properly belong to the shippers and the carriers. Once a container is lost at sea, unless it's posing a hazard to navigation, it's lost. Nothing is done to recover it, primarily because we can't track it. Modern technology could solve that problem.
The risks that are borne by the ocean and coastal communities are nearly impossible to qualify or quantify, largely because little is known about what's being carried aboard the container ship. The manifests aren't required to provide detail on the nature of the goods and the risks they pose for the ocean, with the sole exception of those listed as dangerous or hazardous and noxious substances. In the case of these goods, there doesn't appear to be any limit on the danger that can be mixed in with more benign cargo. The provisions for safe stowage of that cargo are purely voluntary.
The Zim spill provided us with three examples of what can go wrong in such a regime. First of all, it was carrying chemicals capable of spontaneous combustion when exposed to moisture on an open deck. There's nothing in the rules or codes of conduct to prevent this, but it beggars belief that such a casual approach to the carriage of highly volatile chemicals and to the property of others could actually be part of an internationally accepted regime.
It's fortunate that there was no loss of life as a result of the fire on board the Zim Kingston, and it's also fortunate the ship didn't break up or damage the property of other shippers. This is solely due to the fortuitous presence of two salvage tugs with the pumping capacity capable of keeping the ship cooled while the fire burned out.
The first shortcoming demonstrated by the Zim spill is that we have neither the rules to prevent toxic chemical releases, fires or explosions nor the equipment to deal with them when they occur.
The second shortcoming exposed by the Zim incident is that we really have no idea what to expect from the missing sunken containers. Two of them are known to contain a chemical that is acutely toxic to aquatic organisms, and we have no idea where they are or what condition the cargo is in, and 102 of the containers are simply mysteries. We're told that the manifest, which is not made public, describes the cargo only in the most general sense. We have no means of assessing the size or nature of the risk that has been consigned to the ocean. How, then, are we to begin to hold the polluter to account for the risk or to plan and pay for a response when those sunken containers break up and release their content?
The third problem exposed by the Zim spill is that Canada has no container spill response plan, no trained workforce to respond and no policy on cleanup end-points.
In short, there is a policy vacuum where container spills are concerned. In that void, the ship's owner retained an agent with no shoreline salvage experience, no knowledge of the local terrain, infrastructure or response assets, and gave him command of the entire operation. That agent decided to prioritize the removal of goods that were still contained in a beached container over the goods that were strewn all over the beach. That choice is largely responsible for the fact that debris is now strewn on every beach from Haida Gwaii to Tofino, at the very least.
The mindset that gave rise to the above choice is at least consistent with the nature of the whole international scheme governing carriage. Whatever is already spilled is lost and gone forever. What's still contained is potentially salvage at best, and at worst, removing it will prevent further loss.
What's entirely missing from this approach to spill response is a focus on preventing damage to the ocean and to the life that depends most directly on it. The spilled cargo posed a real and immediate threat of widespread plastic and other more toxic pollution, damage to coastal communities and damage to the wildlife that did not even register in the priority-making process.
That is the policy void that I hope this committee will seek to fill.
